Somewhere around the beginning of my teenage years my mother put up a sign over the door. A sign you could never miss if you were leaving the house. With sparkling silver letters in an Old English font against a blue background it said: In Everything Give Thanks. “Everything?”...

The elections are over. For the government, the big job will remain: Crime, unemployment, squatting, health, praedial larceny, water, roads. The teachers, the nurses and the police will come knocking in short order and the enthusiasm that returned the JLP to power will dissipate, especially if Covid-19 stays with...

In the 1940s and 1950s mass weddings constituted a campaign to reduce high rates of illegitimacy and were spectacular public rites of accessing citizenship. These weddings were attended by prominent public officials, social workers and members of the community. In a 1941 wedding in Kingston, 36 couples were married...

Thomas Philip Lecky was a pioneer in Jamaican agricultural science who “made” a cow. No jestering. A man of unparalleled devotion, his phenomenal exploits in animal breeding created a shining legacy for the emerging nation. His unique work was propelled by his rural upbringing and his determination to do...

Good cricketers come in all shapes and sizes, especially bowlers. The best fast bowlers have been six foot something and well built specimens. Names like Michael Holding, Joel Garner, Wesley Hall, Glen McGrath, H. Hines Johnson, Ian Davidson, Steve Harmison and Charlie Griffith spring instantly to mind. Roy Gilchrist...

Tales of the Black Friday Coral Gardens events in recent years disregard the deeper background and leave a warped understanding of Rastafari and the emerging Jamaican society. Rastafari emerged in the 1930s, 100 years after emancipation turfed three hundred thousand Black people off the sugar estates into an uncertain...

Public Opinion was launched by Osmond Theodore Fairclough in 1937 specifically to create an awareness about the need for a political party. It succeeded in 1938 when the People’s National Party (PNP) was born. But it also may be credited with promoting the national movement which, distinct from the...

They made their world so hard Every day we got to keep on fighting They made their world so hard Every day the people are dyin’ For hunger and starvation Lamentation But read it in Revelation You’ll find your redemption And then you give us the teachings of His...

A quiet but not too distant presence in the sinews of Public Opinion was the Jamaican Baptist church. It was the Baptists who led the way to emancipation. It was the Baptists who created the Free Villages for the unenslaved people. It was the Baptists who were leaders in...